I am working on an app using Laravel that retrieves posts from facebook pages (using fb IPA) then make some operations on them, this tool can be used with no login or creating an account, and my question is:
how and to store the temporary data I get from the API since I don't have users knowing this app can be used by many people at the same time?
I guess you could solve this in several ways. I'm not quite sure what you do the get the data.
You'll need something unique to relate to the data. In case you login to the API using OAuth you could request the user profile of the user (example here using the Facebook SDK) and grab the user id or the email address. In case you do not login then you could use something like the session id.
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I've spent the better part of a day researching this and thought I could figure this out on my own, but no luck.
Here's the situation, I have FB authentication in a mobile app. This is working fine. A user can log in and I can access the public profile data, etc.
The issue is that I would like to have NEW users or first time logins to create new records in my private database, because I am looking to store more than email, and FB id. For example, favorite items. I can also accomplish this easily enough with a post to (www.mywebsite.com/api/users/).
So, the REAL issue is that I don't want to have a route that simply allows people to add users to my database, willy-nilly.
Is there a way to pass the access token to an API route to ensure that a user can only add a new user-record to the db IF they have a valid FB login?
I've set up the famous "auth/facebook" route that is popular on the web which also works great, until I access it from my app. It then throws X-origin errors (I believe in part due to the callback route).
this post was similar, but still doesn't quite cover it.
Authenticating against a REST API with iOS client using Facebook SSO as the only login mechanism
Please help!
Thanks,
Wayne
After another two days of digging, I found a rather simple solution.
The facebook graph API will allow you to submit the access token to recieve basic user data.
So my solution is now this:
1. Use cordova-facebook4 plugin to authenticate within the app. (You can find details here: https://github.com/jeduan/cordova-plugin-facebook4
2. Send the FB id AND authentication token to my server route, like this: `myapiserver.com:1234/auth/facebook/<token>/<id>`
3. On the server side, send an ajax request to https://graph.facebook.com/me?access_token=<token received from the
cordova plugin>. This will return the name and FB ID as JSON.
4. On the server, compare the ID returned from facebook to the ID sent with the request. If they match, add the new user, if not, do
not add the user and return an error. Of course, the server will
not allow a new account to be added to the system if that FB id is
already in use.
At this point, it seems that the worst harm that could be done is for someone to hack another person's FB account, get their token and ID and THEN use that to create a user on my system for that person. Which seems pointless enough that I'm not going to worry about those attacks.
Please comment if you know of a better solution or I missed a security vulnerability.
Ref: How to get the Facebook user id using the access token
I can't really figure out what exactly the facebook API and its services are capable of in terms of user management. Given that I would completely rely on facebook for registration and login, does facebook only provide the authentication and registration process and return me data to store in my own database or does it also itself store a list of already registered user accounts which I can query later on so that I could completely outsource user management from my servers?
If you only need to authorize a User, you don´t need to store anything. You only need to store them in a database if you need to identify returning Users, or if you need to use his data while he is not online.
There is no user management though, you can´t just get a list of all users who authorized your App from Facebook. That´s what you have to store on your own. Make sure to implement the possibility to remove a User from your database, Facebook offers a deauthorization-callback in the App settings for that.
I'm using the Facebook PHP API to allow logins into my website. I am also allowing people to login/register using a built in form in my software incase they don't want to use their Facebook account.
I have this all working fine, my only issue is how do I attach the Facebook account to their account in my MySQL Database?
So for example Joe Bloggs wants to create an account on my website. Rather than filling in a form, he decides to login via Facebook. He does so. After he logs in via Facebook, it returns him to a page on my website where he can fill in the rest of his account details. It then saves his account and he is free to sue the website.
My issue is after he logs in with Facebook, creates and saves his account in the MySQL Database, how do I link his Facebook account and his account in my database?
When you login with Facebook, it returns a STATE, CODE and I can also retrieve an ACCCESS TOKEN using the API. However every time I login, these codes change. I thought there might be one code returned that I can use to store in the MySQL Database so all I have to do is match one of the codes to the database.
But I can't seem to do this. Am I coming at this all wrong?
Hope I'm making sense.
My issue is after he logs in with Facebook, creates and saves his account in the MySQL Database, how do I link his Facebook account and his account in my database?
Just store facebook user id in your table.
When you login with Facebook, it returns a STATE, CODE and I can also retrieve an ACCCESS TOKEN using the API. However every time I login, these codes change. I thought there might be one code returned that I can use to store in the MySQL Database so all I have to do is match one of the codes to the database.
You don't need to persist them ever. Only facebook user id is the identifier you need to identify user
Store their FaceBook UserID as an optional field in your user table to link their unique FaceBook UserID to a user in your application.
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/php/facebook-getUser/
I'm trying to implement facebook connect to my website, and i have couple questions.
1: Is it possible to register user in my website using his current facebook email/password.
Let's say user clicks on link Register via facebook and then he have to give me permisions to access his password, email, etc... and after that is done i put that info in my own database and he will be able to login with that account any time he wants without needing to give me permisions any time in the future.
2: If that kind of registration is not possible, what's other solution would be the best for me? Because i need to somehow keep track of that user who logged in with facebook, because he can upload photos, send messages etc.
Anyways, i'm quite new with facebook and similar things, so i'm really lost here, hope some one can help me :)
EDIT Thank you all for wonderful answers it helped me a lot, now all that's left is to read documentation :)
Yes it is, it is possible to get the information of the user. But it is rather complicated, when you have never dealt with it.
First you need to send the user to the following link:
https://m.facebook.com/dialog/oauth?client_id=your-client-id&redirect_uri=xxx&scope=listof-information-you-want
Facebook will then return your client to the uri specified, if the user rejected it will give a reason. If it is not you will get an code in urlencoded format.
This code is needed for the following step, the request of the access token:
https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token?redirect_uri=xxx&client_id=xxx&client_secret=xxx&code=xxxx
This will give back an access token, if the authorization didn't fail.
After that you can ask for the information you want:
https://graph.facebook.com/me?method=GET&metadata=true&format=json&access_token=access_token
This will include a facebook uid, which is unique for all users. Store it and you can discern between a register and login.
This is roughly the process for any oauth2 application.
Facebook will not ask repeatedly for permissions after the user granted them to you. So you can store the access token and reuse it for backend stuff and also use the same procedure you use for register for login.
You can never access the user's password from Facebook even with his/her permission, so the user will always have to authenticate via Facebook and have Facebook pass you the user id of the logged in user once authentication succeeds. You can store all kinds of other data locally, but not enough to authenticate the user yourself.
Once the user is authenticated, you'll have access to the user's Facebook user id via the API, which should be enough to connect all kinds of information to that specific user.
Facebook does not provide access to accounts when passwords are taken from your controls. It provides it own canvas for login information. Therefore you cannot use your first approach to store passwords in your databases. Check this out.
You can however store email addresses once user logins into his account using the facebook sdks. Check this out link for the example of C# SDK sample code.
You can use the Facebook APIs to fetch user email-id, photos, friendslist and other information and then play around accordingly.
You don't get access to the users password - only email if you ask for it.
Best way would be to have a table of users and their Facebook account id's.
If you want to allow users to sign up without Facebook then have a nullable field for their password and facebook id, and also have a field for username - which you could populate from Facebook if they register via that route.
I've been trying to figure out a way to have my iframe Facebook app (built in PHP) work without requiring separate authentication methods. I am already logged into Facebook, but for some reason I still see all these Oauth notices from the example in the PHP SDK.
The only data I need is publicly available even without them "adding" my app. I am looking to collect their Facebook ID (since this is a contest, we need a unique ID for tracking), their name and (optionally) their email address as well.
The problem is, I cannot use the API to fetch the public information unless I already know their Facebook username. Any ideas on how I might be able to get their logged-in username or public handle so I can then fetch the rest of the information?
For whatever reason, Oauth is driving me completely insane with Facebook today.
Sidenote:
I did manage to technically get the Javascript SDK operational, which fed some information to PHP for use. The only issue there is that once I login, I don't see the data. If I refresh...then it shows up. Unsure why the refresh is required, as I wouldn't expect a user to actually have to hit refresh in order to proceed with the app.
I guess you are a bit confused here, Facebook will NOT share the username, id, full name or email without the user explicitly authorizing/allowing your application (and in the case of the email, requesting the email permission!).
Read the official Canvas Tutorial for more information:
In order to gain access to all the user information available to your
app by default (like the user's Facebook ID), the user must authorize
your app.